1st gen Honda Insight.

[Jonny69]

I really like these things. I wrote this out for Retro Rides and thought one or two might enjoy it here, so here you are. They were built from 1999 to 2006 and were the first proper hybrid. Unlike the Prius, it is a lightweight car made of aluminium and weighs around 840kg. It's highly aerodynamic and runs a 1 litre 3 cylinder lean burn 67hp engine with a hefty 13hp motor mounted on the back of it. The battery pack is made up of a 140V NiMh cell made up of what are effectively 'D' cells.

As far as I know it is the most fuel efficient production car to date, with the lean burn manual model able to reach 84mpg and owners reporting they can get over 90mpg and some reaching over 100mpg under the right conditions.









This picture of the engine shows the motor in the back, a large diameter that sits in the bellhousing. It's quite an inspiring picture to me, as an engineer. I've often wondered how to retro fit hybrid technology to an older vehicle and I never considered stuffing it into the bellhousing where there is often lots of spare space around the clutch.



I think this car says a lot about the 'green' credentials that car manufacturers claim today. This was a genuine step in the right direction for truly efficient vehicles and the models that followed it (Prius 1 and 2, Insight 2) don't even come close in terms of fuel efficiency. In my opinion, cars could be significantly more efficient than even this model, but either the demand isn't there or the manufacturers are holding the technology from us.

More information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Insight

There are about 250 in the UK so don't expect to see one very often. I've only ever seen one over here and one in New York a few weeks ago, which took me by surprise. They look amazing, floating down the road like a space ship.

Modding is pretty slim on the ground, with most owners choosing to go the hypermiling route, but there are a few about...







Not much info on the last one but there are some cool pics here.

[Burble]

There's one somewhere around here that I occasionally see.

Didn't Honda make a massive loss on each Insight they sold?

[Justsomebloke]

Got a Black one around the corner & i have to say it looks Ace, Don't like it in silver though.

[Jonny69]

Originally Posted by Burble

There's one somewhere around here that I occasionally see.

Didn't Honda make a massive loss on each Insight they sold?

I know it was an expensive car to make but I don't know if they made a loss on it. Wikipedia indicates it was intended as a rolling test bed for the technology.

[Burble]

I'm sure I read somewhere that they cost £30K to make but were sold for £17K or so. i could be mistaken of course though

[Nutcase]

There's one that parks near my office, see it a few times a week. Never realised it was rare and efficient

Prius' get my goat up almost as much as prius owners who claim they're being green

[A Place of Light]

If I remember correctly, either johnnycoupe or his brother from OcUK has one of these and loves it.....particularly from an engineers point of view.

[volospian]

They look quite nice all stickered up.... Dump the washing machine engine and stick a blown Alfa V6 in the rear... should make a decent motor.. lol

[Darrin]

Nah, jettison the whole power plant and sink a Mazda RX-8 drive train in there...

[Flibster]

Originally Posted by Darrin

Nah, jettison the whole power plant and sink a Mazda RX-8 drive train in there...

Supercharged Renesis.

I like the idea of hypermiling... but good god it's dull.
You'll save loads of money on fuel, and going out *no one will want to be your friend and you'll turn up everywhere too late*

One of the chaps who lives in the flat does it - he hates my car. He has told me that if I drove at 65mph instead of 70 I'd save zzzzz.... I then told him that driving at 65mph is 9000rpm in 2nd and uses a surprisingly large amount of fuel. He looked at me as if I'd just served him a drink with a turd on a cocktail stick in it.

He's got one of those Polo Bluemotion things with wheel fairings, over inflated tyres, various extra readouts and a hand throttle mod amongst other things. I made a joke to the other half about him being an accountant in his spare time... found out thats actually what he does for a living.

As for the Insight, it's interesting. Aero wise it's extremely good. Hybrid tech was fairly primative back then but still worked surprisingly well. Shame they didn't continue th production, but with a loss made on each one it didn't make sence, but gave them some good real world data.

I still think that until battery tech or fuel cell has a leap forward then the most realistic solution for hybrids at the moment is the range extender *as seen in the Lotus Evora 414e* Fairly small number of batteries and a small efficient petrol engine purely there as an electricity generating station. The Evora isn't the most efficient implementation as it's generating ~414bhp from the 2 electric motors.