Today Honda Motor Company announced it will release refreshed Insight hybrids including a somewhat more upscale version with larger engine to the Japanese market.
The 1.3-liter 40-plus mpg version will be joined by a 1.5-liter model Honda is calling the Insight Exclusive, and the company says dealers will get them Nov. 11.
No word was given whether these tweaked models will find their way to the U.S., but it’s certainly possible.
Honda has announced several small but noticeable tweaks for the 2012 editions of its Insight hybrid. But will these changes bring the Insight any closer living up to its billing as a “Prius fighter?”
Next month a Wisconsin Toyota dealer hopes to post a new record for putting on the world’s longest hybrid parade featuring as many as 500 hybrid vehicles. Any make or model of production hybrid will be welcome at the Hybrids on Parade (HOP) event, being sponsored Sunday, July 24, by Smart Motors of Madison. The goal is to actually be recorded as a new Guinness World Record™ for longest hybrid vehicle parade.
Despite its investment in hybrids, electric cars, fuel cell vehicles and the compressed natural gas Civic GX, Honda has earned a reputation for a string of green car missteps. Yet, the company is tenacious—taking a hard study of each shortcoming, and applying those lessons to new and improved green strategies. We spoke with William Walton, manager of product planning for Honda’s lineup of cars from Fit to Accord, to see if Honda might have finally set out on the right course.
Honda President Takanobu Ito says around 10 percent of Honda’s global sales will be hybrids by 2015, and all of its models are built with the ability to quickly adapt into hybrids. According to Automotive News, the strategy of hybrid adaptability began in 2003, when Honda designed the Fit. The hybrid version of the Honda Fit went on sale in Japan in October. For the past three years, Honda extended the strategy to all mainstream models.
Honda announced today that it is going to offer a new, 2011 "value-oriented base model" of the Honda Insight hybrid starting at $18,200, plus destination charge of $750. That's $1,600 less than the current lowest-priced 2010 Insight, the LX. The announcement of the lower priced Insight base model indicates Honda’s seriousness about hybrids—and its diligent efforts to simultaneously lower the cost of its hybrid models while dramatically increasing fuel efficiency.
Honda will dedicate its Yorii factory, north of Tokyo, to producing hybrid SUVs and minivans—instead of making clean diesel vehicles or micro-cars as previously announced.
It’s easy to look nostalgically at the Sprint, Metro, CRX and Suzuki Swift, and view that generation as some sort of heyday of fuel efficiency. But using a rose-colored rear view mirror has a blind spot: Those cars lacked most of the comfort, convenience and safety features—from power steering to automatic transmissions—that today’s car buyers see as absolutely essential.
John Mendel, Honda’s executive vice president, yesterday called for policy makers to refrain from promoting “the virtues of one technology and demonizing another.” Speaking at the Moving Ahead 2010 conference at Ohio State University, Mendel suggested that government agencies are “laying all their chips on the technology du jour.” Without explicitly pointing fingers at EVs, Mendel made it abundantly clear that he believes support for electric cars and next-generation batteries represent “a rush to select a winner that could lead us in the wrong direction.”
Takanobu Ito, Honda’s president, said last week that the company has grown “complacent,” and specifically pointed to its poor performance with hybrids as a key sign of the problem. To correct the situation, Ito is pushing his engineers to have the next-generation Honda Insight beat the Toyota Prius’s fuel economy numbers—and to deliver it as soon as possible.
In an unexpected turn of events, Toyota’s safety recalls could create a jump in hybrid sales. To counteract the effects of negative publicity, Toyota is offering a sale on the 2010 Prius: $249-a-month on a three-year lease. Some dealers are also increasing residual rates and dropping finance rates. To win customers from Toyota, Honda is offering similar deals on the Honda Insight.
Honda is developing a hybrid system suitable for larger cars such as the Odyssey minivan the Pilot sports utility vehicle. Tomohiko Kawanabe, Honda’s chief operating officer for automobile research and development, today told Reuters, "We've left the research stage and entered the field of development." Kawanabe said these vehicles could hit the US market in about three years. The change of strategy could put Honda back in the hybrid game.
It was once thought that the great promise of gas-electric hybrids was to offer new levels of fuel efficiency. In other words, adding even a modest battery pack and motor to a compact or subcompact car could boost the fuel efficiency of a small car from the mid-30-mpg range into the 40- or 50-mpg range. The original two-seater Honda Insight delivered 70-mpg in real world mileage for many of its drivers. Where is the next generation of small high-mpg hybrids?
Last year was the worst for auto sales in decades, but might be recorded in history as the breakthrough year for gas-electric hybrids and other small efficient cars. Connect the dots from global sales stats.
Consumer Reports released results from its annual car reliability survey, and the 2010 Honda Insight scored the highest of any vehicle in predicted reliability. Hybrids dominated the list for reliability—with five of the eight most reliable family cars: Toyota Prius, Ford Fusion Hybrid, Mercury Milan Hybrid, Nissan Altima Hybrid and Toyota Camry Hybrid.
In the auto industry’s struggle to re-invent itself as innovative, high-tech, and environmentally friendly, car companies have fixed on the idea of plug-in hybrids and electric cars as a solution. What hasn’t been worked out is the fundamental question of how and where a million plug-in vehicles will find juice for their cars. Pike Research, a renewable energy research and consulting firm, identified a number of myths about how electric car charging will unfold by 2015.
When the Honda Insight was introduced in early 2009, reviewers gushed with praise. Reviewers claimed that the Insight is more compelling and fun to drive than the quintessential gas-electric car, the Toyota Prius, which is bigger, faster, and uses a more sophisticated third-generation of hybrid technology. But in the past few weeks, a number of critics have found it quite easy to find faults with the Insight—harshly criticizing the car for the very traits that have allowed Honda to keep down the price.
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In the second half of May, Kelley Blue Book surveyed 753 prospective car buyers and found that 87 percent expect gas prices to rise sharply. How is that affecting their car buying habits? According to Kelley, shoppers are looking at smaller cars with smaller engines.
Japanese carmakers are widely recognized as leading exporters of hybrid cars to the United States. But their key strategic advantage may become their ability to sell hybrid gas-electric vehicles to Japanese consumers.
The new Honda Insight is being billed as the Prius-fighter. Living up to that expectation will depend on real-life numbers that drivers start to post. We recently ran the Insight twice in our usual test loop. When we drove with a lead foot, we got a very modest 38.8 miles per gallon. On the second slow and steady run, we easily managed 51.2 mpg.
“Hybrid affordability” is the catch phrase for the week. Just days after Honda announced a base price of $19,800 for the new 2010 Honda Insight, making it the least expensive hybrid to be sold in the US, Japan’s Nikkei business daily reports that Toyota plans to counter with a cheaper new hybrid model of its own.
Honda’s goal with the new five-door 2010 Honda Insight is affordability, not maximum mileage. But the first set of real-world road tests are arriving, and they are consistently higher than 60 mpg.
The goal of the 2010 Honda Insight, based on information Honda released today at the Detroit Auto Show, is to make the best use of the most cost-effective hybrid technology. And that may be a smart strategy from what some analysts consider to be the smartest car company in the world.
The new Honda hybrid will hit dealer showrooms in April 2009. That’s the official word from Honda about the hybrid-specific yet-to-be named hybrid—designed to take the Prius head-on in the battle for the hybrid market.
The Toyota Prius’s design—raking windshield, rounded roof line and swooping hatchback—has been emblazoned in the public consciousness as the very definition of what a hybrid is supposed to look like. That will present a difficult challenge for Honda, as it prepares to launch its new hybrid-only subcompact—shown here as an "unofficial" illustration based on spy photos.
Honda today announced that it will introduce its new small hybrid in early 2009, as well as another unique small hybrid vehicle based on the sporty CR-Z compact concept sports car—and a hybrid version of the Honda Fit subcompact.
Honda has been tightly guarding the details about its next hybrid, which the company is introducing next year. But details are emerging. The subcompact hybrid will be priced below the Civic Hybrid, will use nickel metal hydride batteries, and will take design cues from the sleek Honda FCX Clarity.
Honda won't be making any more of its iconic Insight, but plans are in the works for further green innovations.
