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Redesigned, Bulkier Honda Insight to Challenge Prius
In what probably amounts to good news for consumers eyeing a hybrid for their next vehicle purchase, Honda is resurrecting the "Insight" name, this time in the form of a five-seat, Prius-like hatchback. The automaker's announcement included the tantalizing statement that the cost would be "significantly below [that of] hybrids available today," but provided no further details on pricing. Although Honda may have some trouble unseating Toyota's dominance of this particular hybrid market, hopefully the Insight's reintroduction will help to make hybrid cars even more affordable to consumers. This is also welcome news to folks like myself who, after the initial flurry of excitement when the now-retired original Insight was introduced in '99, were left scratching their heads at Honda's hybrid strategy as Toyota picked up their dropped ball and ran with it.
The problem is with hybrids is that for most you end up paying more than you would your current car:
If you have your car payed off and spend $70 a week for gas, that is a total of $3640 for an entire year.
On the other hand, if you buy a $25000 hybrid, you might only need to buy $30 of gas a week, but unless your car payments are less than $120 a month, you aren't saving any money by buying a hybrid.
Yes, over time a hybrid is going to save you money, but by the time you get it payed off, there will be a more effective hybrid that costs less.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Coupling is 90% efficient, not 10%. Oops. I don't think we'd much care about acceleration being less after that.
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The original Insight got slightly better gas mileage than the Prius-- for people who don't need the room of the 4-door, it was a nice car. I wonder if the new one will also blow away the Prius mileage?
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Honda should pick up Toyota's all-electric "dropped ball" and run with it. If memory serves, Toyota used to have a 100% electric car and stopped making it. Since ALL of my weekday driving is well within about 50 kilometres of home, I'd kill for one.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The 1989 civic got 50mpg highway, better than the Prius.
Yes, we need extra safety items. Yes, those add weight. But all the advances made in improving efficiency have been burned away on power and sportiness and cup holders.
50 Mpg TWENTY years ago.
And no mention of a plug-in aspect.
Very discouraging.
Honda's hybrid Civic has the battery panel across the back of the rear seats -- you can't fold the rear seats to put long items through the trunk. It's a great little car, but that crucial lack of utility makes it no-go for the single car owner.
That left the market to the Prius and the Escape/Tribute. The E/T looks like a truck, but check the inside and outside dimensions and you've got a small wagon, just ugly. While the Prius... Is it just me? I don't like this sole Toyota. The interior feels like a 74 Vega. I've been holding off, wanting better options for my next car purchase. Here's hoping Honda's does a fine job with the new Insight.
(Sorry - I tried to work a bad software analogy into this car thread but failed.)
Honda already has a car that is more fuel efficient than any car they sell in North America, and would easily out-sell the Prius. But they choose not to sell it in North America.. why?
It's called the Civic CTDi. The Civic is already the most popular car in North America. It is less expensive than the Civic Hybrid, offers a heap more power, and has arguably better combined mileage. In fact, this engine was awarded "International Engine of the Year" in 2005.
True, but I still got an 06 jetta tdi because a) I drive 20k miles per year and b) the 650-700 miles per tank keeps me away from the pumps for a couple extra days and c) diesel is proven technology compared with hybrid.
878659 - yep its prime.
I drove both the insight and then the prius. The insight started with gas motor by default so it made noise when you started unless you did more than 3 starts and stops in a short period. The electrical motor only kicked in at higher speeds (most of the time). The Prius did things the other way around. When you start it's electric only unless you push the pedal to the metal. Because of the way the insight started you never could hear the silence that makes driving the Prius so much fun. That and the insight had poor visibility behind.
Well, my Civic Hybrid looks just like a regular Civic.
Whether or not that's fugly is a matter for debate, though.
What gets me is that for 15 years, I was a light-truck guy (Nissans), and there are no hybrid light trucks. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada.
I'd love to see a compact truck (smaller than either Nissan's current Frontier or the Tacoma) with a hybrid motor that can handle everyday use. I'd be first in line to buy one when they come out.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I own a real 2000 Honda Insight. It is an amazing car. Aluminum bodied two seater made to last.
The low weight and the 990 CC engine with electric assist ensure that I am the one pulling away with spinning wheels at the lights leaving muscle cars in the dust.
This new Insight although it looks like the original one, is a stock standard steel vehicle, high curb weight. Bigger engine on even bigger weight would mean less acceleration, poorer MPG and thanks to the steel body shorter lifespan. I test drove a brand new Honda Civic last week and came away less than impressed. Just another over sized car.
I think the real Insight showed a vision of smaller more nimble cars as frugal with gas as a small motor cycle. No you can't carry 10 bags or cement it it but that is why it is called a commuter vehicle.
The "new" "Insight" does not do the original car any justice.
where the hell are you going to put the batteries in a light truck?
Someone people care less about how much they pay for gas and more about using less of it. I'm looking at getting the Hymotion/A123systems battery pack for Toyota hybrids so I can go 40-50 miles all electric. Not because of the price of gas, but because I don't like shoveling my money to those who provide the fuel. If you use less fuel with a cheap car, more power to you.
Article mentions the number of Civic Hybrids sold in 2007... I own a 2006 (received at the end of 2005).
The count for 2007 was a little over 32,000... but I'm pretty sure when I bought my 2006, they told me only 40,000 were made for US distribution. Just made me wonder a bit about the number... maybe it's low because of lack of availability??
In the U.S. emissions are regulated by grams per gallon of fuel, instead of grams per km or mile.
This is done so the US makers can sell a 7.3L megaturbopowerpenis duallytripply.
VW Golf TDI Hybrid (from May '08)
More info:
69 MPG Golf TDI Hybrid
Though it will probably only be available in Europe for a while, it's still a step forward.
Further proof that people by hybrids to "make a statement" rather than "to save money." Basically, it's an e-peen enlarger.
That's true of hybrids, too: the electric motor makes maximum torque at 0 RPM, you know. As for actual acceleration, IIRC the Insight's 0-60 time was ~12 seconds without any electric assist, but ~8 with full assist.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It was obvious to me why Honda supposedly "dropped the ball" as the original article wonders about, each Insight they sold was at a loss, and they weren't likely to ever recoup the costs. Better for their competition to have more demand for such a product.
Sure their investment paid off in other ways, and they were still the first with a production hybrid (which was more efficient than the Prius) and now have the most hybrid available models I believe.
I only wish they'd make more of them as plug-ins or fully electric instead of requiring all that gas.
Of course, I also wish they'd bring the diesel Honda's to the US market, which would be much nicer than a hybrid and better mileage than a Prius at least.
What are they? Salvage cars. They've been in an accident, they've been written off by the insurance company, and they piece them back together. Both of my sons drive them, they are excellent cars.
It's worth remembering that if a car has been in even quite a serious accident *but has been repaired properly* it's perfectly safe to drive. We repaired a friend's BMW that was quite badly damaged, and when the engineer came to assess the repairs (it was actually that bad) he pointed out that we should have cut apart the undamaged bits and welded them to up to the same standard as the repairs...
Congratulations, though. By keeping older cars out of the scrapyard and on the road, you're doing far more for the environment than any hybrid driver.
Don't ask for a hybrid truck.
What you want is a truck with a "green" diesel engine. Quiet and fuel efficient and still able to generate a lot of torque.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The problem with natural gas is that there's not enough of it. The biggest reason for the rise in electric tariffs in the early part of the 2000's was largely because everyone built natural gas power plants, and, they more or less used up all the natural gas. Now you want to go and build natural gas cars... good luck getting natural gas.
Isn't that why Mr. Pickens is suggesting that we adopt wind power on a large scale? I saw one of his interviews and he advocated using wind to displace natural gas for electrical production so that our natural gas resources can go into the transportation sector.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
According to the New York Times [nytimes.com], 57% of Prius buyers cited "Makes a statement about me" as the reason they purchased the car.
Hmm..... I sense a coming storm of smug ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Diesel trains have operated purely off electrics with a generator being turned by a diesel for decades now. Lately GE has taken the obvious step of adding regenerative braking, batteries, and a controller to their Evolution series. Now whether all that will scale down ........
Why can't they make more 'green' cars that look svelt like the Tesla? At a reasonable price.
Well if you want a Tesla-like car, you'll have to hire Lotus to design it for you, which won't be cheap. And to meet modern safety standards, you'll have to use different (and expensive) construction methods and materials.
Otherwise you can go with the usual design process of the big automakers:
1. Someone who's had the creativity systematically beaten out of them draws up a decent looking but still somewhat bland and and forgettable design on paper.
2. The sketch is drawn up in CAD and goes through the dullification process. Any body lines are smoothed over, radical shapes homogenized, cool signature features of the car are removed in favor of something already in production (or easier to produce), nice proportionate wheels are swapped for the now standard golf-kart fuel-savers. To meet modern safety standards, the car has to be built like a tank, so A,B, and C pillars triple or quadruple in girth because it's too expensive to use honeycombed (unless it's a Subaru), triangulated or tubular pillar structures that wouldn't need to be the size of the frickin' Empire State building. The whole frame of the vehicle is beefed up and airbags are jammed in wherever possible.
3. An ugly, bloated, horrendously overweight jellybean of a car that bares only a slight resemblance to the concept sketch is produced. You yawn and never give it a second look.
People don't like cars that look too different, and won't buy cars if they can't compete in the safety arms race.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Interesting link. What's odd is that my 1988 Mazda RX7 has a .31 coefficient. You'd think that somewhere in the last 20 years they could have improved on that somewhat more.
Just another ignorant American.
Allegedly the Audi diesel that won Le Mans a year or 2 ago was quiet enough that "you could drive it through a suburban neighborhood and no one would call the police".
I imagine it was quite powerful too.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I own an 07 Prius. You can really feel the drag coefficient when you coast. The thing will coast just about forever.
On my commute home, I jump off the freeway and up an off-ramp hill to my neighborhood. One of the things I like to do is to take my foot off the accelerator at freeway speed a ways before the ramp and see how far up the hill I can coast.
It's really a bizarre sensation. I usually can make it all the way at a decent speed and still have to use the brakes. It almost feels like you're sliding on ice. It's the kinetic->potential energy loss going up the hill that does most of the slowing of the car, not the wind and friction losses. And you can feel it. It's unearthly. It gives you the sensation that some invisible force is pulling you up the hill. Because you're so used to other cars slowing down much faster in similar circumstances.
The Prius really feels like you're driving a solid piece of magic sometimes.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
as that used by gasoline engines (the Otto Cycle)
For that matter, the Otto cycle isn't the most efficient for spark engines either. The Atkinson cycle, having a power stroke longer than the compression stroke, can be more efficient.
Though I don't think that that efficiency increase would be restricted to gasoline engines - it could also be utilized with a diesel engine.
Then again, I still remember reading about high-efficiency two stroke diesel engines should be able to meet emission standards without much effort. They use a turbocharger to flush out waste gases at the end of the cycle with fresh air, and no fuel is wasted(the major reason for fuel inefficiency and pollution with two stroke gasoline engines) because diesel isn't injected into the chamber until the end of the compression cycle anyways.
Could probably do this with gasline, you'd just need a diesel type injector for each cylinder.
I don't read AC A human right