What makes you say it would get poor fuel economy? Every ICE car has what I said, FI or not.

Based on the Gen2 having gone increased displacement and NA, I do not see any reason why this car would go FI out of the factory in this generation, if ever. Imho, anyone not satisfied with the car as it is should try it first, then either look for another car or be willing to have it modified to meet their goals… while I personnally went the latter route after owning the car for 4 years, I also am of the opinion this car doest not « need » FI… the chassis has a very high ceiling potential but the car is great as is in my book.

STI could go 2.5L with Forged Ti rods, dry-sump and 8250 redline

Rumor started

Using valve timing to reduce compression ratio.
Retarding ignition timing.
Richening the mixture.
Those are the things you said would be done to get aftermarket FI to work on this engine (I thought it had a higher compression ratio than the last gen). Those things all reduce the efficiency of an engine and are done as minimally as possible on stock turbo cars, because they start with lower compression.
If this really has the same CR as the last gen than I expect turbo kits will work even better. The larger displacement spools a turbo quicker and doesn't need as much boost.

High static CR isn't the limiter for most people. Bending pistons is a bigger issue. I've not seen somebody unhappy with performance of a decent turbo on the twins. Just unhappy with blown engines from aggressive tunes.

I think the confusion came from a mistake by media in the early press releases where the CR was indicated as 13.5. I suspect they mixed it with the steering ratio which is 13.5:1, but since then the actual CR was confirmed at 12.5:1 like the first gen. In addition, the gen 2 has now straight rods, so should be more FI friendly as well than gen 1. i recall reading that the tranny was also strengthened, so all good things…

So far it sounds like 350whp on a small-medium EFR should not be an issue on stock internals.

Yeah, I can’t wait to see what my tuning shop will be able to do out of the box on stock internals when they update their stage 1 turbo kit for the gen 2, which they also offer on a brand new BRZ with full warranty equivalent to OEM when bought with a brand new car… (the LP Turbo from Lachute Performance) so basically one can buy a fully warranteed new FI BRZ… Not aware if other shops offer something like that…