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2010 Insight updates Honda's hybrid expansion
By John Gilbert Last Updated: Monday, May 25th, 2009 03:54:24 PM Helio Castroneves was a popular winner of Sunday's 2009 Indianapolis 500, and while winning for the third time, Castroneves has something in common with the rest of the 33-car field: Every one of the race cars was powered by a Honda engine. No, these aren't the same engines as you'll find in your basic Civic, but they are the products of the same technology that allows Honda engineers to build a new car like the 2010 Insight hybrid. Honda built a different Insight a decade ago, a super-light and ultra compact two-seater that was the first hybrid car introduced to the U.S. market. Toyota, which had built its first-generation Prius first, quickly hustled the Prius to U.S. showrooms after that, and Toyota and Honda have been battling to raise the standards for hybrid technology ever since. Honda put a hybrid system into a model of its Civic, and into a V6-powered Accord, while Toyota spread out its Hybrid Synergy Drive to the Camry, tthe Highlander, and the Lexus RX400h and LS400h. Honda discontinued the hybrid in the Accord, and quit building the little two-seater Insight, which didn't stir up sufficient sales, even though it could get an honest 73 miles per gallon, and routinely got 60-plus. Maybe it was ahead of its time; for certain it was ahead of the 2008 gas price hike. But now, with the world's auto industry plunging to the depths, and gas prices on the rise again, and with demand for reorganizing the industry with more devotion to alternative energy vehicles, Honda has recreated the Insight as a new companion for the Civic. The new Insight is a low, sleek, four-door sedan that is an enjoyable everyday driver, fun to drive, feels as roomy as the larger Civic, and gets an easy 44 miles per gallon out of its updated hybrid system. You can probably coax more than 44 mpg, if you follow the instruments closely. Click into "Econ" and the gas engine's stop-on-idle works sooner to shut down the engine, and switches the air-conditioning and continuously-variable transmission to optimum economy function. Along with being able to find instrumentation that will notify you of how well you're doing, you are first taken by the modernistic instrument panel and controls, as you settle into the driver's bucket. It shares with the Civic a unique two-level speedometer, where the driver looks through the steering wheel at the tachometer and other instruments, but finds the digital speedometer in a little capsule atop the dashboard, viewed above the steering wheel. Honda always has been beyond the curve in ergonomics, and that digital speedometer is a prize example, because you only have to shift your vision slightly to see how fast you're going, and while looking at the speedometer, your peripheral vision allows you to still be aware of what is happening on the road ahead. In addition, when you are on full "Econ," the stylish back-lighting on the digital speedometer is a nice, woodsy green. Drive a bit more aggressively, it fades to blue-green, and continued hard driving makes it change to an all-blue glow. I like blue, and I didn't realize what I was doing to make it come on, at first. The Insight will be followed by more hybrid-powered vehicles from Honda, which intends to expand its comparatively simple system to work to build a high-mileage sports coupe, and possibly adding one to the Fit line. Honda went at the hybrid game from a completely different approach than Toyota. In the Prius, and all other Toyota hybrids, the gasoline engine does not move the car, but instead sends power to a battery pack device that powers electric motors, which move the car. Honda instead has what it calls IMA, for integrated motor assist. It couples a disc-shaped battery pack, developed by Panasonic first for the Civic, and fits it between the engine and the transmission. The nickel-metal-hydride battery pack is lighter and more potent than the Civic's system, so it can be positioned under the rear floor instead of intruding on storage space. That allows more storage, and with the 60-40 rear seats folded down, it has more storage space than the Prius. A pivotal difference between the Honda and Toyota hybrid systems is that any glitch in the Toyota electrical system will knock the vehicle out of commission. Glitches don't happen often, although extreme cold can sidetrack a Prius left out in the cold. A similar electrical system glitch in the Civic or Insight will prevent the IMA from assisting the little gas engine, but the vehicle could keep going indefinitely on the gas engine alone. While the Honda Civic Hybrid has been virtually unpromoted compared to the fantastic job Toyota has done with the Prius, which accounts for about half of all hybrids sold, I've actually gotten better fuel economy from the Civic Hybrid than the Prius. The new-for-2010 Prius appears to be a significant improvement, but it needs to be, because now it will have to battle Honda on two fronts, with the Insight returning as a small sedan to join its now-larger Civic big brother. The original Insight had an EPA estimate of 73 miles per gallon, and it would actually approach that lofty figure in real-world use. My favorite Insight story was told by a Honda official in charge of alternative energy vehicles, who told me that the company had never had a failure in any hybrid system until about two years ago. It involved a fellow who bought a used Insight and used it for a delivery service in Chicago. The battey-pack system failed – after 437,000 miles! The new Insight, with four doors, is heavier than the original 2,000-pound two-door, but still is only 2,800 pounds. If the new car's maximum is closer to 50 mpg than the original 65-73, that will be welcome. I anticipate fuel prices may continue to rise after their Memorial Day climb. If gas gets up past $3 per gallone, and doesn't turn back all summer, getting 44 mpg will be a major source of satisfaction. Especially when you can drive the car hard through any kind of congestion in urban tangles, and adding the extra kick of paddle-shifting the Insight as though it has a racing 7-speed. It is up to consumers to decide the question both the Honda and Toyota hybrids ask. The Prius is unique, and the hybrid is its only model. The Civic Hybrid is one model in an array of Civics, virtually indistinguishable from the DX, EX, or Si models. Some have criticized the Prius for being obviously different car, and others have criticized – or worse, not noticed – the Civic for NOT being obviously different. The new Insight not only gives Honda a distinctive hybrid model, it will be priced around $20,000 – undercutting the Civic and the Prius, and less than any other hybrid on the market. Some national auto magazines have accused the Insight of looking exactly like the Prius. usually accompanying the article with a close-up angle showing both front ends next to each other, where they have no resemblance, with the Insight getting a stylish, horizontal-bar grille angling down from each side. There is a similarity in their profiles, and for sure there is a similarity to the rear ends. It doesn't take a rocket scientist – although rocket scientists would concur – that in order to be super-sleek aerodynamically, with a great coefficient of drag, a car must have a high rear deck.
With that in mind, the Insight's high rear deck includes a rear window that has a see-through panel on the rear deck itself, to aid visibility while backing up. The new Insight has a distinctive grille, wrapped under the nose and setting it apart. It has an extremely sleek angle to the windshield, but then, so does the Civic. The engine in the Insight is only 1.3 liters, which is part of the beauty of a high-mileage hybrid. A comparatively tiny engine, augmented by doses of electric power when the need arises. The 1.3 is a potent, high-output engine, with i-VTEC, which is Honda's variable valve-timing, and while it's output is only 88 horsepower and 88 foot-pounds of torque, the 8-valve four-cylinder won't snap your head back. But it is surprisingly adequate for power, particularly when stepping on it prompts an added 13 horses and 58 foot-pounds from the highly efficient electric motor. I drove the Insight around Minneapolis and St. Paul for several days, then made my usual trek up I-35 to Duluth, scaled the cliffs of Duluth and the North Shore for a few days, then back down the freeway to the Twin Cities. Watching the computer closely, I recorded 43.4 miles per gallon on the freeway, including the Twin Cities miles, and then I clicked to reset the computer, it inched up to 44.5 mpg in freeway-only driving. The EPA estimates are 40 city and 43 highway, meaning I was able to top both of them, whether driving aggressively or staying conservative. I'm sure I could have done better, but I really enjoyed pinching off the CVT cables and driving it like a 7-speed. Steering and handling is good, and while I was curious to see drum brakes on the rear wheels instead of the discs all around, it seems as though Honda has found a way to coax more regenerative braking power out of the brakes than on the Civic. With regenerative braking, energy from braking feeds into the same generator, so the more power you get from braking, the less you'll need from the gas engine, thus more mpg. The Insight is fun to drive, and not the least of the enjoyment is trying to get its fuel economy up higher than you did before. The car will go 0-60 in about 10 seconds, but you know, there's not a lot of street-racing challenges out there these days, and the challenge of getting great fuel economy is a lot more fulfilling than trying to screech the tires on takeoff. Especially in real-world driving, which often means stop-and-go congestion. Maybe Helio Castroneves didn't have 45 mpg on his mind while circling the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 223 miles per hour with his Honda engine, but one leads to the other – the ability to extract optimum fuel-efficiency from an engine is the key to both auto racing performance or high-mileage figures in fuel economy. |
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