Hey aerosignal, so disregarding the human safety aspect, its not harmful to the car if I coast on Neutral with my engine on?
As in, it won't spoil the transmission? Latio is not flat-towable mah.
Er that one I don't really know. Effect to car, coasting at neutral is related to the transmission, not the engine.
At neutral, you have to burn gas because your engine is no longer driven by your wheels.
With engine brake, you may slow down abit. However, I find that on ben shears, I can sustain 80 kph coming down without steppping on accelerator at all. This means that I am burning 0 fuel when coming down the bridge.
I think you got the neutral coasting idea from hypermilling sites where they do at times coast at neutral. However, most of these people drive hybrids and it works very well for U.S. roads where they have long stretches of roads with gentle incline. In our case, the slopes are usually steep and if you go to neutral, you will accelerate down the slope so much you have to use your brakes to slow down (traffic). As mentioned before, everytime you step on brakes, the energy you created goes into thin air, wasted as heat.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't try coasting at neutral myself because I don't think I can save more that way. Just accelerate less so you brake less.