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This being Slashdot I suppose it's possible you can't drive and are not interested in cars but every major manufacturer has a variable valve timing system of one form or another. It's not like no one has heard of it, Honda even appends the fact that their cars have variable valve timing onto the model name.

Outside of stunts like recharging the battery from the wall and claiming this improves the gas mileage, what is the advantage of a hybrid over a normal internal combustion engine? If you don't introduce external electrical energy, the electric battery and motor are only a storage device. All the energy is ultimately derived from gasoline. So how does the electic motor improve the energy efficiency of the internal combustion engine?
One of the main real benefits of hybrid cars in freeway driving is that they have reduced throttle losses.
Honda has designed an engine which cleverly reduces throttle losses in a much less expensive way.
http://www.vtec.net/news/news-item?news_item_id=37 6015 http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Valve-timing_20_22t hrottle_22

A fair question. I don't know, but a list of the statistics they did publish is available from the article on vtec.net.

I can't find an official Honda page, but Temple of VTEC has an article where an Accord diesel achieved 76.6 MPG over a real-world 419-mile trip. In endurance track tests it achieved an average 130MPH over a 24-hour period.

This pretty much blows away the hybrids with a single-engine system and a nearly full-size car with no drawbacks. It's too bad that US diesel is too dirty for engines like this.

Honda has a new Diesel powered car that isn't a hybrid, and is getting 76 MPG (U.S. gallons) in real-world testing by the FIA. It's also breaking speed records for its class in the FIA testing (with the exact same cars used for the fuel efficiency test). I'm curious as to why diesel powered cars aren't more popular in the US, they can be much more efficient, and with recent advances in catalytic converters, and technology, these new diesel engines run very clean and very quietly.

There's no batteries to worry about, and you get a fullsize (well... not subcompact like most hybrids anyway, hehe) car with a full trunk to use.

-Jesse

There's nothing to disagree with - what I wrote is fact. You're welcome to check it any day you like.

I bothered to Google a bit though:

The error rate that Charles obtained for his 100kph run stabilized quite consistently at about 4.2% (he also took tyre wear into account, actual computed error was 5.8% but tyre wear was calculated to contribute about 1.6% out of this total rate).

You could well have been tricked by the fact that the police regularly give you a "rebate" of a few percent on the speed you're actually doing.

Myself I've had one car (Renault 19) with a 9% error factor, and my current (S40 T4) is quite good with only 3-4%. You can measure this yourself out on roads with kilometer marks and a stop watch.

Ah, that's the old VTEC system. They now have a scheme called i-VTEC that is continuously variable.

See here.

So getting 120bhp/litre and a 9000rpm redline out of a two litre four cylinder engine has no geek appeal? How about inventing variable valve timing?

gotta be recaro seats:

http://integra.vtec.net/driving/recaro_srd.html

-gk

To be real, they could mound the four motors to the chassis and run CV axles to each of the wheels. That sounds reasonable. They could still incorporate steering and braking via the motors.

Honda is going to start selling a Civic hybrid this spring. 50 mpg, normal size Civic. See here for the press release and for the pictures.

I personally would find this a huge step up from the Insight, and probably the Prius as well.

Honda is going to start selling a Civic hybrid this spring. 50 mpg, normal size Civic. See here for the press release and for the pictures.

I personally would find this a huge step up from the Insight, and probably the Prius as well.

If you think that's too expensive, I'm afraid you'll find hybrid vehicles unacceptable in the intermediate future. Honda is selling the Insight as a loss-leader; the batteries alone are incredibly expensive, and all the components combined are more expensive than $20,000. The question on many Insight owners' minds is, will service parts be priced at their actual cost or the adjusted (loss-leader) price?

However, Honda is set to introduce a hybrid Civic in the 2001 model year, so perhaps the engineering has improved enough since the introduction of the Insight to make hybrids profitable.