Hybrids are what you get when you combine a conventional petrol engine with an electric motor that's also a generator when it's being driven by the wheels and a battery to store the energy that ordinary cars lose. So I guess you'd say it's really a philosophically different way of doing the business of energy management in the automotive industry.
The new Honda Insight is the most affordable hybrid in Australia. It's ten thousand dollars cheaper than a Prius. And okay, nobody spends 30 grand to start saving money on fuel. It's just not economically rational. But if you'd care about how shackled we are to that stuff about our dependency on foreign oil, about your carbon footprint or the implications to the environment, it may be the new Insight is part of the solution.
Hybrids have been in Australia for almost ten years, and everyone knows they're a green option, but hardly anyone understands exactly how they work. So it's like this: you're steaming up the road in your conventional car. The lights go red so you hit the brakes. And the brakes basically We take all the kinetic energy you've got from moving and then convert it to heat and you lose it and you never get it back.
In a hybrid, little electronic motors turn into generators, and you store some of your kinetic energy when you're breaking as electricity in a battery. under the flow pan at the back. Then when the lights go green again you get to launch off that free energy in the battery, the little electric motor helps the petrol engine gets you going again and basically that's where the fuel economy benefit comes from.
When you get in a green car you don't expect neck-snapping performance and you're not disappointed with the inside. But you know what? It's better than I thought it would be. It goes a lot better. Handling and braking and all of that stuff like guess you'd say it's wonderfully benign. It's not a rip-snorting driving experience, but it's not disappointing either.
The car's actually a fair bit noisier than I thought it was going to be transmits a fair bit of road noise into the cabin. The only other thing I really don't like is the rear vision in the central rear vision mirror here. It's quite limited, there's a horizontal bar blocks your view at the back glass.
But everything else is typically Honda and that means pretty good. I really like the steering wheel which seems straight from the Civic. It's a very comfortable car to sit in for long periods. I don't know about you, but when I learned to the drive. Mom and dad didn't include fuel efficiency as part of the curriculum.
And I don't think many Australians have really every had very much if any training to drive for maximum fuel efficiency. So what a happy coincidence that the inside's got an eco-coach, a little bit of a personal trainer built into the dashboard. The more efficiently you drive, the more little trees you manage to grow across the information center in the middle of the dash.
Now you could have a bit of a shot at that, you could say it's a bit of a gimmick. In fact, driving style is just as important as the technology that underpins the car. And if you combine them both, you get the best possible fuel efficiency result. So I'm gonna spend the afternoon trying to grow just as many trees as I can on the dashboard in front.
Don't get fooled the first time when you stop at a red light, in the inside. Everything goes really quiet. And that's because the computer shuts the engine down. Every other time in a conventional car when that happens you've broken down, but here you're just not turning and burning fuel when you don't have to.
So even when you're stopped, you're saving. And then when you get back on the gas, the engine starts automatically. And it's a little bit clunky sometimes. You can fool it a little bit if you need to get going in a hurry. But don't blame the but when you drive a 100 thousand dollar German car with the same technology, it's a bit clunky too.
If you buy a Honda Insight, you single-handedly save the planet or prevent oil from running out but it does take all the green boxes if you live in a big city and you want to do your And you don't have to pay through the neck for the privilege. For a more detailed review, all technical specifications, to leave a comment, or even contact the Honda dealer, just follow the links on this page.
