ECHO
MOTORS
Edited by Mike Torpey
by CHRIS RUSSON
E
CO-DRIVING is the name of the game at Honda as the Japanese car maker launches a new hybrid said to be capable of averaging 64 miles per gallon. With a flashback to the Tamagotchi cyber pet craze of the 90s Honda has turned the dashboard of the new Insight into an ecological playground. Good drivers are rewarded with a glowing shield symbol if they manage maximum economy and low CO2 emissions while a line-up of LCD trees indicates your skill at saving the planet. And for those who don’t care about the environment a withering branch will appear on the instrument panel. It may sound crazy but Honda has adopted the approach to educate drivers how to be green. Under acceleration the digital speedo is backlit in green if good economy is being achieved. Be heavy with the throttle and the colour changes to blue suggesting that the driver ease up. Adopting the Tamagotchi approach injects a bit of fun into the serious side of getting the most out of each gallon and is intended to show drivers how to get the most out of the car. The new Insight goes on sale next week and sees Honda fight back against the top selling Toyota Prius. Honda actually beat Toyota to the hybrid market with the odd looking but highly efficient original Insight petrol-electric coupe back in 1999. Since then Toyota has stolen a march, selling more than one million Priuses around the world. Prices for the new Insight start at £15,490 setting a new hybrid benchmark. For a car no bigger than a Ford Focus that is at the higher end of the scale but there is a lot of technology packed into a hybrid. Honda’s system is slightly different from Toyota’s. Both use electric motors to supplement a conventional
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GREEN MACHINE: The new Honda Insight hybrid starts at £15,490
Honda’s insight into eco driving petrol engine and while Toyota calls the system Hybrid Synergy Drive Honda opts for Integrated Motor Assist. With the help of the battery powered motor the petrol engine does not have to work as hard and therefore uses less petrol. The Toyota allows the Prius to run purely on electricity for about a mile – at which point emissions are zero. Honda on the other hand has fitted a stop/start system which it
claims is lighter and cheaper. Both are aerodynamically styled and look slightly unconventional. The Insight is powered by a 1.3-litre petrol engine also used in the new Honda Jazz. It develops 88bhp and with the electric motor in play the total output is 102bhp. It is enough to give the Insight a theoretical top speed of 113mph, a 0 to 60 time of 12.5 seconds and a claimed average mpg of 61.4. Annoyingly that’s good enough
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only to deliver CO2 emissions of 101g/km just missing the 100g/km threshold to avoid road fund duty. In normal use it is fairly easy to get more than 50mpg from the Insight but it's a struggle to get anywhere near the official figure – even with the ECON (that stands for Effective Control) mode selected which remaps the engine settings to give optimum economy. A good diesel can average more and that can balance out the
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savings from a hybrid. But hybrids are trendy and Honda wants to cash in on their appeal. The Insight has a CVT gearbox which on the top specification models can be operated manually to bring in a bit more fun. It’s also a five-door hatch with more than 400 litres of luggage space and with the battery pack now fitted below the floor the back seat can now be dropped to deliver a maximum of 1,117.