Much has been written about the Insight, Honda’s new low-priced hybrid. We’ve been told how much carbon dioxide it produces, how its dashboard encourages frugal driving by glowing green when you’re easy on the throttle and how it is the dawn of all things. The beginning of days.So far, though, you have not been told what it’s like as a car; as a tool for moving you, your friends and your things from place to place.
So here goes. It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
The biggest problem, and it’s taken me a while to work this out, because all the other problems are so vast and so cancerous, is the gearbox. For reasons known only to itself, Honda has fitted the Insight with something called constantly variable transmission (CVT).
It doesn’t work. Put your foot down in a normal car and the revs climb in tandem with the speed. In a CVT car, the revs spool up quickly and then the speed rises to match them. It feels like the clutch is slipping. It feels horrid.
And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.
So you’re sitting there with the engine screaming its head off, and your ears bleeding, and you’re doing only 23mph because that’s about the top speed, and you’re thinking things can’t get any worse, and then they do because you run over a small piece of grit.
Because the Honda has two motors, one that runs on petrol and one that runs on batteries, it is more expensive to make than a car that has one. But since the whole point of this car is that it could be sold for less than Toyota’s Smugmobile, the engineers have plainly peeled the suspension components to the bone. The result is a ride that beggars belief.
There’s more. Normally, Hondas feel as though they have been screwed together by eye surgeons. This one, however, feels as if it’s been made from steel so thin, you could read through it. And the seats, finished in pleblon, are designed specifically, it seems, to ruin your skeleton. This is hairy-shirted eco-ism at its very worst.
Please click to read the rest of the article at the Times Online
Don’t get me wrong, I like new technology, and improved fuel economy too, but I just had to show this auto review excerpt from the Sunday Times because, well, it’s just so darn funny.
Dave Wendt says:
While I don’t know what the financials are on it for Toyota, I think I should mention that demand has outstripped supply on the gen-2 Prius pretty much constantly since it was introduced in October 2003. I waited 7 months for mine…and there were people reselling them on eBay for more than the list price. (There were also some unscrupulous dealers who loaded them up with useless dealer add-ons and then charged more money…take-it-or-leave-it. Fortunately, the dealership that I bought it from didn’t do that; however, when I gave a half-hearted try to finagle a deal with my dealer since I knew him personally, he said, “Joel, when there is a 6-month waiting list on a car, the only negotiations from the sticker price are up.” Needless to say, I decided sticker price sounded just great.)
True enough…but I think the point is that we have now have enough years of data (the 1st gen Prius having been introduced here in 2001 and I think a couple years earlier in Japan) to say that there has been no big issues so far with battery life even for cars that have racked up quite a bit of mileage.
Very funny review, though through the humor I feel he’s still not a big fan of this car.lol
City driving, I hear these cars are marvelous. But on constant highway driving? I’m told from a bud who drives a Pruis, they really don’t get much better mileage then a modern efficient hydrocarbon burning car built these days.
So besides the idle shutting down and using it for stop and start driving, I can’t see any other advantage. It’s kind of like going from horse, to horseless carriage and then to a modern car. Then going back one step to horseless carriage only with more technology involved.
I’d like to know when a flux capacitor or fission driven vehicle will hit the market?
Now we’re talking horsepower!hehehe!
Oh yeah, not a big fan of wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission
But it does say,
“The amount of free energy contained in nuclear fuel is millions of times the amount of free energy contained in a similar mass of chemical fuel such as gasoline, making nuclear fission a very tempting source of energy”
Now that’s good MPG! 🙂
If you’re interested in muscle, check out
http://media.origin.popularmechanics.com/documents/ecomuscle/
I think this might have been posted here before, but it’s a Hemi-powered Challenger with an electric motor added, making it a hybrid. Interesting project.
My only car is, and since 1996 shall ever be a 1966 Toyota Landcruiser with a Chevy 350 engine, with 2 gas tanks with an overall capacity of 45 gallons. I get maybe 16-18 mpg, and don’t care in the least. The top has been off since 1997 whether the temperature is 100, or -10. I will never sell it, and inheritance will consist of prying the steering wheels off my cold dead fingers. And Anthony, If you ever want to explore real rural Nevada, drop me a line anytime.
I’m all for cleaner environment and all, and I’m really all for saving money. But these cars are too little. I’m on the road a lot and it makes me nervous for the people in those little cars—especially for people in those ‘Smart’ cars. I think Smart is the wrong name for them. I don’t want to come across one that has been in an accident with a semi.
Look out for your legs :
On the other hand I do like this one :
http://images.loqu.com/contents/755/576/image/080909/smart-car-with-monster-truck-wheels/5.jpg
Read this 2008 article about fuel economy of Jeep Chrysler products already on the road in Europe and ask yourself the right questions! For example “What the hell is going on in the USA today and what the added value of hybrid technology is all about?
I think we don’t need it. Like we don’t need Cap&Trade or EPA Regulations for that fact.
http://www.contracthireandleasing.com/car-leasing-news/index.php/2008/03/26/jeep-prove-impressive-fuel-economy/
If this is the future of automotive engineering, the future for anyone wanting power in a car is in the past. By that I mean, car enthusiasts will hold on to old cars and fix ’em up, or buy kit cars.
And if the government tries to make all non-“green”, pedal-driven cars illegal, they’ll make millions of subversives who will drive what they want, regulations be damned.
Indeed. Peter didn’t mention how appropriate this review is here, as this A. A. Gill somehow manages to get from a delicious rant on enviro-whackos to the put-down of a tapas joint in London. Climate Realists here will enjoy this tidbit:
/Mr Lynn
Mr Clarkson has long been able to turn a fine phrase, but I don’t know where he got “ham slicer” from, the things are always called “bacon slicers”.
Well, we do call them that over here. (You are not from the US; the lack of abbreviation after “Mr” gives you away. Also, your decent grammar and usage.) But “bacon slicer” is a new one on me.
The question I have with hydrogen powered cars is: What happens to the water? Scientific American had Alan Alda on PBS praising the Mercedes hydrogen car to the skies. They showed the water dribbling out of the tailpipe onto the roadway. Even here in the Seattle area the temperature can drop below freezing at night and stay there during the day. What will freeway driving be like when all the cars are dribbling water on the frozen pavement? Answer: Very expensive Dodgem Cars. A catch tank? How long before the enviros pass the wastewater through a mass spectrometer and your local TV News Numnums are in a swivet about: “TOXINS FOUND IN HYDROGEN CAR WASTEWATER”?
We drive a 2005 Prius around town. It really works well. Of course it is no sports car but only a kid who never grew up (like Jeremy Clarkson) would expect a fuel efficient hybrid to handle like a BMW M5.
I work for a tier 1 supplier for the transportation industry. My company designs and builds assembly/test machines and turnkey assembly lines for transmissions and engines so we get to see what’s coming down the pike.
Currently we are working on the GM (now Government Motors) Volt program, which none of us can figure out how it will in any way get GM out of the hole aside from Obama infusing a perpetual flow of taxpayer money to keep it afloat, and heavily subsidizing consumers. We are however willing to accept millions from the public treasury to remain profitable.
The diabolical part of the equation is Obama….err, GM will be able to utilize billions of monopoly money to compete with Ford who must rely on private capital investment. I really don’t think most people understand just what it takes to go from concept to production.
Basically we are witnessing the formation of automotive version of AmTrak.
I’ve owned a Toyota Camery Hybrid (4-door) for three years. It seats five. I’m getting on average 35 – 37 mpg around town and 32 on the hiway. It handles well, has excellent acceleration, and to date, has required no maintenance other than the normal routine oil changes and system check-ups. The sound system is pretty decent too. My wife and I are very pleased with the car and wouldn’t hesitate in buying another when we wear this one out.
One size does not fit all,
I rent the Pious from time to time, can’t say its my type of car but it works although I guess I’m too lead footed to get the mileage claimed
first off I live in a rural area and my normal “commute” (when it’s not just downstairs in my slippers) is to one of the major airports – all of which are 130+ miles away, no electric car is going to make that anytime soon
as part of my work involves hauling a few 100lbs of electronics to remote Mt tops on occasion my daily driver is a 3/4 ton 4wd 6speed turbo diesel – with brush guards & winch, chain saw in the back – I also get to drive it for 100’s of miles at times (any job that’s less than 700 miles that requires tools or gear – these days it simpler and sometimes faster to drive than fly) it gets mid 20’s at 75mph unless I’m pulling the 5th wheel (some of my job sites have been so rural that its 70 miles to the nearest motel – anyone ever been to New Effington SD? – makes you wonder what old Effington was like)
so what’s going to happen, not just odd balls like me but the farmers and ranchers who have a 20mile or better trip to paved road and then its another 100 miles to the nearest store – can’t haul feed or cattle in one of them crumple boxes – and how long will one last off pavement?
NON-pedal driven cars PIMF
Hank, aye, but can you haul a large boat or large Airstream behind it? Can it haul a family of 8? Or will it outrace a muscle car?
It illustrates the commissars contempt for the masses perfectly, they sit on their high thrones of privilege while passing judgement on what the little people need, in the USSR they got the Lada.
Capitalism gave us an equality never dreamed of by our forebears, socialism and the new world order being hammered into place will give us such crumbs as they see fit, their hubris and arrogance looks exactly the same as the USSR elite to me.
In the NWO you take what they give you, you do what they tell you, you think what they tell you to think and you keep your mouth shut and look grateful, you can do what you like in the NWO just as long as it fits exactly with what the NWO commissars demand.
dhogaza (15:38:41)
I hope you enjoy driving it.
But shouldn’t you be on a push bike?
@ur momisugly Xavier Itzmann (15:34:53) :
“…In case you had any glimmer of doubt, you can now be certain that Ford, GM and Chrysler will not exist as independent companies in 2016.”
There’s still Harley Davidson. My favorite point, btw, in all this eco-nonsense, is that a technology almost as old as cars still gets double-or-better the mileage as these hybrids, and costs less to make and operate, and that is the motorcycle. When gas prices started going up, I decided I was going to go for it. I purchased a 250cc Yamaha for $4k new.
On some tanks I get 88 miles per gallon.
I also happen to ride through West Los Angeles in my daily commute. Which has probably the highest percentage of hybrid vehicles of any local area in the nation. I’m trying to find just the right way to express how much money I spent on a vehicle that is so much simpler than their pieces-of-shit hybrids, that gets better mileage, oh and in California I get to white-line (which means I can move through traffic), so I actually reach my destination faster than they do in So.Cal traffic.
Just maddening. Europeans get it, if you want economy, you move to two wheels.
“DR (21:12:40) : Basically we are witnessing the formation of automotive version of AmTrak.”
Ewwwwwww!
Bill Jamison (16:05:42)
Try Clarkson’s books they’re a hoot.
Mr Lynn (20:36:59) :
Peter (19:13:48) :
<>
Now there’s “quote-of-the-week” material, and I should know !!!
The whole quote again –
“Environmentalists are the nutters with degrees in composting who sit next to you on the bus. But that’s not their real impediment. The real killer thing is the schadenfreude: the naked, transparent, hand-rubbing glee with which they pass on every shame, sadness and terror. No disaster is too appalling or imminent that the green movement can’t caper and keen with a messianic glee. Take George Monbiot, the Malvolio of the green movement, who, as I’ve pointed out before, would be a geography teacher if it weren’t for the amazing good fortune of imminent apocalypse. Every week, he sifts the minute details of demise, like a jolly self-congratulatory Scrooge. Most of us would rather drown with the polar bears and Bangladesh than get in a lifeboat steered by Monbiot. . .””
Oooops – I had extracted – “Most of us would rather drown with the polar bears and Bangladesh than get in a lifeboat steered by Monbiot. . .”
Gotta stop using those <>s.
After 3 years of daily recharging an electric car’s battery capacity is reduced by at least 80% and very expensive to replace. The battery itself ends up in a landfill where it would take up a lot of space. And think how much energy was used to produce and deliver the battery in the first place. Now imagine the result of millions of electric cars whose batteries have died out after a few short years while the regular combustion engine can soldier on for as long as one wishes. I know which one is more expensive and polluting over a widescale of time and number of purchasers.