2016 Honda Pilot: Super green SUV with new engine
The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy publishes an annual list of the most fuelefficient vehicles in each product segment.
The list is meant to point out the most efficient vehicles in each segment, so shoppers looking at family sedans — or threerow SUVs — can find ones that drink less gas than the others.
Their rational thinking is that a tiny subcompact EV is not a viable option for millions of Americans who will buy a different kind of vehicle that actually suits their needs. This year, the 2016 Honda Pilot placed extremely well on the list.
Honda’s goal with the 2016 Pilot is to make the vehicle significantly lighter to achieve meaningful improvement in fuel efficiency.
Honda’s job was made tougher by the fact that the 2015 Pilot was already the lightest in its segment. The front-drive version scores 27 mpg on the EPA’s highway driving cycle and 20 mpg on the city test.
The newest Pilot weighs 286 pounds less than its predecessor, despite the addition of amenities, sound deadening, thicker side glass, and front crash structure to address the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s new 10 percent overlap frontal crash test. Increased use of high-strength steel contributes to Honda’s ability to add reinforcement while reducing mass.
Pilot’s engineers also saved fuel by reducing the vehicle’s aerodynamic drag. The 2016 model is just as large as the old one in terms of the face it puts to the wind — its frontal area — because Honda was determined to preserve cabin space for customers’ families, said Marc Ernst, Pilot development leader. Instead they refined its surfaces and junctions of components to produce a 10 percent reduction in overall aerodynamic drag, he pointed out. Critical gains were made out of sight, with plastic covers over chassis parts underneath the Pilot smoothing airflow beneath the vehicle.
Air isn’t the only source of drag when a car moves over the road. Its tires rolling on the pavement cause drag that wastes fuel, so Honda has selected rubber with reduced rolling resistance.
The brakes are obviously designed to stop the car, but when they aren’t in use, the pads normally continue to drag along the surface of the spinning brake rotors, inducing drag to slightly slow the car and waste gas.
In fact, carmakers purposely have the anti-lock braking system periodically squeeze the brake pads closer to the rotors for faster response time in an emergency. Pads get knocked back from the rotors from running over bumps and potholes, so keeping them close is important for minimal braking distance.
The 2016 Pilot still parks the brake pads as close as it can to the rotors, but it also features a spring that keeps the pads from actually touching the rotors until the driver presses the brake pedal.
And there are familiar sources of improvement for the Pilot’s fuel economy. The 3.5-liter V-6 engine gains 30 horsepower, for a new peak of 280 hp. The combination of increased power and efficiency comes as a result of the installation of direct fuel injection that makes the engine less thirsty and has the benefit of increasing torque so that the Pilot can use more efficiency-minded gear ratios than before.
The new engine continues to feature Honda’s cylinder deactivation feature to run on fewer than six cylinders when less power is needed. But while the old system could run on six, four, or three cylinders, the new engine skips the intermediate step, with only six- and threecylinder modes.
That’s because, when engineers installed recording instruments on Pilots driven by Honda employees, they found that the Pilot almost never engaged its four-cylinder mode, so simplifying the system’s operation was a logical step.
Meanwhile, the 2016 Pilot’s auto transmission leaps from six speeds to nine, helping keep the engine at its most efficient speed under more condi- tions. Base Pilots continue to make do with the old six-speed for now, while the higher trim levels get the nine-speed. The ninespeed Pilots also feature automatic engine stop/ start technology, which also helps boost efficiency incrementally.
In total, this raft of changes help make the Pilot an efficient option among the three-row family crossovers, though it isn’t a hybrid. It shows how increased efficiency is the result of hard work and details attended to, not an exotic drivetrain.