Honda Insight Preview

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By Anthony Crawford | November 24th, 2010

In just a few hours, CarAdvice will get behind the wheel of the latest petrol hybrid car to enter the Australian market – the Honda Insight.

Priced from just $29,990 the Insight is set to become the most affordable hybrid vehicle in Australia. It will undercut Toyota’s iconic Prius by near enough to $10,000 and that alone should see Honda’s second generation Insight find plenty of new homes across our busiest cities.

Satoshi Matsuzawa, Managing Director and CEO of Honda Australia, told the Australian motoring press that “Honda’s future starts with the Insight.”

In fact, Honda plans on having at least four hybrid cars in this market by the end of 2012, including an all-new Civic, Jazz, CR-Z, and the Insight.

Clearly, smaller, more efficient cars will figure strongly in Honda’s future automotive line-up, and the Insight is sure to feature prominently in that mix.

At the heart of the Insight is a 1.3-litre SOHC i-VTEC petrol/electric engine with Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) which when combined, produce an acceptable 72 kW of power and 167 Nm of torque from 1000-1700rpm.

As you can well imagine the Insight is the epitome of ‘environmentally friendly’ too with CO2 emissions down to 109g/km on a combined fuel consumption of 4.6-litres/100km.

Apart from the 1.3-litre i-VTEC 4-cylinder engine, Insight is loaded with a bunch of high-tech features that form the powertrain. There’s the high-power lightweight ultra-thin electric motor, the lightweight and compact battery (although it’s a Nickel-metal hydride unit and not the more advanced Lithium-ion type), Regenerative braking, Drive-by-wire throttle and CVT (continuously variable transmission).

The question that was posed by one of my colleagues was has Honda missed the mark as far as Hybrids go, and has everybody that ever wanted a Hybrid, already got a Prius? Quite possibly I suppose, given that they’ve sold over two million of them since 1997.

However, my guess is that Honda will sell plenty of these Insights. They look decidedly similar to the latest generation Prius, but at a significant discount on the Toyota offering.

That said the all-new Insight enters the market in the small car class, so it’s not in the same league as Prius when it comes to passenger space in the front and rear seats.

I had a chance to sit in the rear seats and while it’s comfortable enough, there isn’t an abundance of legroom back there, but then again, most cars in the small car segment share that same characteristic.

Up front, things look to be decidedly more exciting with an instrument display that looks more like a high-tech video game than automotive gauges.

It’s all about the Ecological Drive Assist system with the Insight – a myriad of virtual displays, which are supposed to help the driver deliver better fuel economy by providing a range of information about driver characteristics represented in a variety of super bright colours.

Honda is calling the exterior styling “Aero Athlete”, which of course, highlights the aerodynamic qualities of the Insight. The process has obviously worked wonders, as the drag coefficient is just 0.28, which means, this is one very slippery automobile.

Honda are expecting to sell 200 Insights each month in Australia although, production can be ramped up to handle additional volume, if need be.

CarAdvice will post a complete review of the Insight from behind the wheel on Thursday.

Jabba the Hutt

This is now by far the biggest selling car in Japan. When it lands here it will be $10 grand cheaper than a Prius and arguably better looking. I wonder how the taxi fleets will respond. I suspect Honda may have a winner here in Oz too.

Igomi Watabi

sounds like it might be a bt small for traditional Australian taxi duty?

Jabba the Hutt

That hasn’t stopped the Prius.

matt

and as stated its smaller then prius. i dont get the need for this car as they are bringing out another civic hybrid?

Jim

Does anyone else see prius in the design of the rear?

Skeeter

I see old insight and old crx

http://fiat bill

Why has Australia had to wait so long for this car, even NZ has had this car for a number of months.
ABMPSV

Top 10 selling car in Japan in 2009

Car Make & Model … Number of Cars Sold in Japan in 2009
1 Toyota Prius … 208,876
2 Honda Fit (Jazz) … 157,324
3 Toyota Vitz (Yaris) … 117,655
4 Toyota Passo … 98,883
5 Honda Insight … 93,283
6 Toyota Corolla … 90,178
7 Honda Freed … 79,525
8 Nissan Serena … 78,836
9 Toyota Voxy … 71,426
10 Nissan Note … 65,745
Able

I do like the way it looks, especially the rear 3/4 shot above, but I wasn’t impressed with it at AIMS 2010. Interior was way too plasticky and small for my liking! Australia’s equipment levels aren’t the best either but it’s good to see Honda fiiinally offering sat-nav on a car other than a top-spec Accord/Euro and Legend.

I’m not really a Hybrid bloke so I’d have a similarly efficient yet much better driving Golf 2.0TDI. If I wanted scarily efficient, I’d have a Golf Bluemotion! But I agree with Shak, this Eco-drive is showing us a Honda I really don’t like. One example is that they used to have the best manual gearboxes in the biz and it’s very disappointing to find that you can barely find a model that’s so sporty that the short VTEC ratios force you to shift. Honda’s magic is gone… Replaced by terrible-value and not very good cars as far as I’m concerned.

I hope that the rumours of the new NSX project being on again prove to be true!
Rando

You sure the Prius and Camry Hybrid use lithium-ion batteries? I thought they also used the nickel-hydride batteries like the Insight.

Owen Petersen

Sorry Anthony Crawford, Rando is 100% correct. The Toyota Prius and the Camry Hybrid both still use Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries although they hyde this fact quite well on thier website by not metioning it anywhere except in their PDF spec sheets which can be either downloaded or ordered by mail. Probably not a bad thing source to use when comparing similar technology!

Owen Petersen

Having driven the Insight during my holidays in Japan last year I am confident in it’s ability drive in reasonably spritely manner whilst still delivering excelent fuel efficientcy. My wife and I clocked up over 1,400kms in our base model rental, mostly highway and flogging it everywhere as is the norm in any rental car. Over the course of our trip we achieved an average of 4.3 litres per 100kms. It is actually capable of runing on battery power at quite reasonable speed and at time would coast at around 125kms per hour using just battery power and no fuel. I have pleantly of video evidence of this in action. The handling of the car when winding through either tight backstreets or on mountain ranges was direct and instilled quite a reasonable level of confidence. I am looking forward to driving the Australian version to see if it is any different and suggest that anyone who is looking for a nimble and efficient vehicle should drive one and judge it for themselves as like all of Hondas cars that is where it will win you over. The motoring press like all press tends to look for the negatives and if you believe everything they write we’d never be able to decide on a car because nothing is perfect even the golf.

Mark

So it can run on battery alone? I’ve read the contrary in quite a few write-ups..

Owen Petersen

The engine will still be running however fuel usage drops to almost non-existant, just enough to keep it ticking over.

PaulS

Because of the nature of IMA, in which the electric motor acts like the clutch itself, the petrol engine will still be spinning whenever the car moves… whether or not it’s actually burning petrol is the real story…

matt

dammit rando you beat me to it.
Shak

Its nice to see that Honda is charging down the efficiency route with the massive rollout of its IMA technology across its range, but i cant help but think that this sudden obsession with Hybrids and fuel efficiency is spelling an end to the days of fun to drive Honda’s with some of the best donks in the business. First the Type-R Civic, and slowly the Euro is slated to take up IMA. Off course they have to meet the Eu and CAFE standards, but if VW can make its Twincharger engines deliver eco-fuel consumption, and yet brilliant driving dynamics, why cant such a stalwart as Honda do the same?

PaulS

Shak, what’s not apparent in Australia is that all of these trend towards hybrid cars have more to do with Government regulations and heavy penalties than it does with being Green…. The Green Halo is just advertising based on feel good factor.

Like it or not, other manufacturers will follow suit. Now I think the Government penalty (overseas) is based on CO2 output and fuel consumption across the whole fleet… so with some luck, as long as the fuel consumption goes down across the entire range… maybe car manufacturers will be able to offer at least one car that’s actually exciting to drive!

Rick

Nice looking hybrid but it doesn’t seem like it’s any different engine-wise from the old Civic hybrid. IMA is a joke. Connecting a weak electric motor to a low power engine is not impressive. You can’t drive exclusively on electric power and the CO2 & fuel ratings are not really impressive. It’s a good looking fuel efficient car but I’m not convinced that it qualifies as Hybrid. Sticking a $2 battery motor to a petrol engine does not make a hybrid.
mrxandthexfactor

ITS A PRIUS COPYCAT AND HONDA’S DONE A BAD JOB AT COPYING. SO UGLY. REAR VIEW WILL BE OBSTRUCTED BY THE SPOILER THAT SPLITS THE TWO PIECES OF GLASS

Reputation

That’s not correct. If you look at the first gen Insight (1999 onwards) and first Prius (1997 onwards which was a sedan) you will see that the 2nd and 3rd gen Prius copied the original Insight’s design, while also refining it. With this new Insight, Honda has actually copied the Prius copy of their original Insight. Confusing yes, but it is important to note that it was Toyota who started the copying game first!

binladen

It is overpriced! Honda is smart about making big dollars by simply put together a small engine with a electric motor. the Cost won’t be too much different from a current civic.

PaulS

So what would you say about Toyota charging 38k for a base model Prius?

Cost IS different because production line is more complex, more parts to make/order, more parts to assemble… and target volume is lower too, meaning all the extra infrastructure to build this car has less means to recoup for its build cost…

It’s not easy making cars… in fact, a lot of cars that you think ‘cheap’ out there are sold as a loss…

LukasUtopia

Emissions from the manufacturing of components (such as the extra hybrid system) should be added to the emissions equation to calculate a more accurate Eco rating. A Golf BlueMotion can achieve very similar fuel efficiency without the extra emissions from an additional hybrid system. Whole of lifecycle assessment is needed.

Owen Petersen

If you looked closely at Honda’s production facilities and processes you would see that Honda is taking that into account and that is why they are unable to turn out as many car as quickly as Toyota or as cheaply (production cost not sell price). Honda is actually being perhaps a little too concientious in the way they produce thier vehilces which is a big part of why they are are slower to produce and also kilo per kilo more expensive to produce. Honda also encourages their supplier to use more ecological processes in order to reduce thier whole life cycle emitions.