FIRSTDRIVE: HONDA INSIGHT:Honda wants a slice of the suddenly lucrative hybrid market, but does the Insight really move the green car game forward? Mark Nicholfinds out
EVER SINCE Al Gore determined to fly from place to place in a private jet with inconvenient tales about an imminent man-made apocalypse, the car has proved a handy little scapegoat. For sure, cars spit out their fair share of CO2, most of which tends to stick about and make the place warmer, but so do planes. And cows.
Yet, nobody’s suggesting we fly in electric aeroplanes just yet (probably because a plug-in plane with a 50-mile range would be more hassle than it’s worth), and we need cows for cheeseburgers and things. So, the car gets it in the tailpipe.
That may be a bit facetious; everybody would like a car that’s environmentally blameless, but we also want something spacious, cheap to run and, heaven forbid, a bit of fun. How inconvenient.
Electricity seems the most likely saviour, but it’s proving awkward to make electric cars fit the remit, so it’s being phased in gradually. Very gradually. The first petrol-electric hybrid was, in fact, built 11 years before Henry made the Ford Model T. Ferdinand Porsche even had a go, producing over 300 “Mixt” cars from 1901 onwards, which combined a small petrol engine with electric motors in the wheels.
Then we pretty much forgot about hybrids for 100 years or so. But now they’re making a Take That-style comeback: podgier, more sophisticated, still dancing to the same tune, yet suddenly far more credible.
Thank the Toyota Prius for that. And in case you can’t remember what the Prius looks like, squint a little and imagine a Toyota badge on the front of the car you see here. The Prius is a cultural phenomenon, already making over a million people feel greener on the way to the shops after becoming a synonym for eco-benevolence.
A single car niche, though? That couldn’t go on any longer; enter the new Honda Insight. The old one arrived before the Prius in 1999 and was the first mass-produced hybrid to hit America, but looked silly because it had no rear wheel arches and could only fit two embarrassed people inside.
Finally, notwithstanding the Civic Hybrid, the Prius has a proper, stand-alone foe from Honda. And that’s a good thing, because nobody likes monopolies, and competition means that, in theory, the price of hybrid ownership should come down – not before time. Honda, predictably, is trumpeting the Insight as the world’s most affordable hybrid – though it won’t say how much it will cost, even though it will come to Ireland in April.
So let’s cut to the chase: the Insight is not a car for the leaden of foot with a penchant for high-speed cornering. Unlike the Toyota, the Insight does not ever advance on electricity alone, rather uses Honda’s IMA (integrated motor assist) system, in which a 14bhp electric motor assists an 87bhp petrol engine, providing improved low-rev torque and facilitating more frugal petrol requirements from the engine. A 12.5-second 0-100km/h sprint is the result.
Sadly, it’s all run through a CVT automatic gearbox which, although efficient, serves up a harsh din so annoying you’ll never want to accelerate hard. There’s a rather noisy electric motor note buried in the tumult, too. To compound matters, the steering rack is too quick while being completely bereft of any feel. As ever, this test drive comes with a proviso that the cars arriving in Ireland might be further developed from the early cars we drove on the international launch. But there are no guarantees.
On a positive note, the Insight is comfortable where there are no potholes, while the cabin is of typically Japanese sturdiness.
The party piece, however, is the “eco assist” driving companion. Five digital flowers line up on a display nestled in the rev counter: drive like a maniac and they’ll disappear, but go easy on the throttle and you get a prize. So it’s a straight choice between atrophy and a trophy. How patronising – and distracting.
There’s an ECON mode too, which when deployed lowers torque, smoothes out the throttle response for better economy, changes the CVT’s “shift” pattern and reduces the air conditioning’s workload. At town speeds in this mode the Insight feels more lethargic, which is to say positively asthmatic, but you will feel the warm glow of doing your bit for the globe.
But let’s look at this objectively. If you really wanted a sporty car, you wouldn’t touch this with a big wicker bargepole, which is why Honda’s claim that it has tried to make the Insight sporty is, frankly, nonsense. It is economical, though.
The problem is, you can have the best of both worlds already. A good few diesel hatchbacks will do the same job in a considerably more satisfying way. Sure, hybrid technology points to the future in a more assertive fashion than a rattly oil burner – but for the time being, it’s difficult to justify an Insight over, say, a Ford Focus ECOnetic.
Compare 4.4l/100km and 101g/km CO2 with 4.3 l/100km and 114g/km CO2 (putting both in the €100 tax bracket), then ask yourself whether the Insight’s conspicuous environmentalism is worth the labour of actually driving the thing.
Factfile: Honda Insight
- Price:€25,000 (estimated)
- Engine:1.3-litre i-VTEC with IMA electric motor
- Peak power:88bhp
- Peak torque:121Nm
- Transmission:Automatic CVT
- 0-100km/h:12.5 seconds
- Emissions:101g/km
- Combined cycle fuel economy:4.4 litres/100-kilometres