Well well well, Pekingduck has finally got us some real numbers to play with!
He said he averaged 29.5mpg on a mostly highway at 85-90mph (holy shit) trip, and 39mpg on a mostly highway 70mpg trip. Put through the ecomodder calculator, these points basically match the 1NZ-FXE's equivalent load BSFC points, and considering that his car is brand new and will probably pick up a few percent higher efficiency as he drives it, I think this is reason to celebrate
Going off the 1NZ, 65mph should give 42mpgish, but it could be even better than that :O
The real interesting thing will be to see how this engine behaves under very low load, but I feel like they're never going to release a BSFC map
I think a 6th gear right in between the manual and auto 6th gears would be worth trying, with 15% longer 6th gear and looking at the same range of points that apparently approximately match the 1NZ-FXE, we can expect the difference to close to within 7% at the engine, 6% minus AT parasitic load
46mpg 65mph cruise anyone?